RS

MEMBER DIARY

Rick Santorum’s Lousy Argument

First of all, why does Rick Santorum always look like he’s looking away from people and why does he seem so angry all the time? This is going to be a real problem if he’s the nominee, especially going up against the supposedly “cool” Obama.

Secondly, Libertarians shouldn’t be apart of the conservative movement? Look, I was an independent voter because I’ve got a libertarian streak (especially on fiscal issues) and I couldn’t STAND the kind of pork barrel spending projects that “conservatives” like Rick Santorum represented. I became a Republican because I saw the conservative movement embracing the Tea Party movement. If the only people we’re going to allow into the party and the conservative movement are white Christian social conservatives, how are we going to win any elections? We need to embrace those people, but we’ve got to be inclusive of people who agree with us on flanks of the platform.

Finally, His argument? Absolutely lousy. Yes, we realize that entitlements are more of a problem than earmarks. But, this is like a family with financial problems saying, “Look, eating out at Chilis and Applebees every night isn’t the REAL problem, the REAL problem is the fact we have a mortgage we can’t afford.” Of course, the big purchase items (in the case of reality, entitlement reform) are a bigger source of the problem, but it doesn’t mean smaller things (like earmarks) are good. The fact is, earmarks and pork barrel spending, however small, are morally unacceptable in a government were we’re going to have a problem paying our bills very soon.